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less than one and a half hours a day; and such a system will
keep a large Staff fully occupied. In connection with this
Despatch No. 30051 subject, I have to refer you to your Despatch No. 416 of the
13th December last, and also to the attached copy of a letter
which has just been received from the Headmaster, in which he
points out the pressing necessity for filling the vacancies
at present existing on the English Staff.
6. The suggestion of the Committee at Section
96 of their Report does not call for any action at present. I
concur in their opinion, however, that the Education Department
should not have more than one head, and that the Inspector
of Schools, who is responsible for all the other schools
connected with Government, should, when occasion offers, be
made responsible also for Queen's College.
7. I observe that Dr. Wright states in paragraph
5 of his Memorandum that Sir Henry Blake was 'strangely
misinformed" when he wrote that 'European scholars are obliged
to regulate their progress by that of their Chinese classmates,
who are painfully endeavouring to assimilate Western education
taught to them in a foreign language'. Dr. Wright affirms on
the contrary that as a matter of fact in combined classes
Chinese are more rapidly qualified for promotion, and leave
behind the non-Chinese boys in the lower class'. I think
that the Headmaster must either have misunderstood Sir Henry
Blake's remark or must hold an opinion at variance with that
held by other educational experts in the Colony. Unless it
is to be taken as proved that the intellectual abilities of
Chinese boys are decidedly superior to those of European boys,
it